sub VS run

Scripts in bin have no documentation, no easy way to enumerate them, etc. There is definitely a time and a place for bin scripts, especially as things grow in complexity. However the beauty of just is that there's one file (the justfile) that defines all of your project's actions. You don't have to go spelunking into bin to figure out how to tweak a compiler flag, etc. And since just will run anything there's no reason why your complex bin scripts can't just be called from a simple one liner task in a justfile.

Could your write a bash script that does stuff like enumerate all the bin scripts, pull out documentation comments, etc.? Absolutely, and people have followed that pattern for a while (see https://github.com/qrush/sub) but it's a bunch of boilerplate to copy between projects. Just pulls out that logic into a simpler config file.

Many moons ago Basecamp published sub (github) which runs on a similar idea with different tradeoffs being chosen.

I've been using Run [0] for this purposes.

[0]: https://github.com/TekWizely/run

To the extent that posts like these evolve into discussing the merits of Make as a task runner, I would like to offer my tool for review:

* https://github.com/TekWizely/run

I built it to feel like make, but be better at managing tasks and wrappers.

If you are evaluating task runners and appreciate the simplicity of Make's syntax, I hope you'll give Run a try.

I invite you take a look at Run, a similar tool that I maintain:

* https://github.com/TekWizely/run

Support for including other Runfiles was recently introduced, with support for globbing and the ability to indicate if an error should be generated if no files are found.

Unrelated to this topic, I invite you take a look at my project which a tool purpose-built to be a better version of what your makefile became:

Run: Task runner that helps you easily manage and invoke small scripts and wrappers

https://github.com/TekWizely/run

Defining commands feels like make, but comes with a bunch of extras targeted at the needs of a task-runner.

I hope you'll check it out!

This looks like an interesting way to manage scripts globally. I could even see it able to manage n-sub-commands deep (vs usual "command sub-command" - maybe it already does?) by just trying to resolve each argument as a dir until you find a script to execute.

If you're interested in ways to better-manage small scripts and wrappers more locally, please take a look at my project, Run:

https://github.com/TekWizely/run

For those looking for a powerful task runners that feel like a makefile, please take a look at Run:

https://github.com/TekWizely/run

It's better a managing and invoking tasks and generates help text from comments.